The Abyss Stares Back: A Pizza Ranch Review

I’d been hearing about it forever. Long before a single brick had been laid. No foundation. No down home decor. I was hearing about Pizza Ranch coming to Shorewood. Apparently a crowd pleaser among people who are easily pleased, they were slapping the pizza buffet right on the frontage road next to the highway, ,for everyone to see! Then nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen.

What felt like years passed before building commenced, and even then, the process was long and drawn out. I’d already lost interest by the time they announced the Grand Opening. I was drawn back in. How can you not be when you are a man of my girth? All You Can Eat pizza and fried chicken. That’s a damn fine time, to me. Damn fine.

Early reports were positive, but I decided to wait until a special day to go. I wanted to go on a holiday to get a real feel for the place, and I found my opportunity. I visited Pizza Ranch for the first time on the 30th anniversary of Nolan Ryan beating up Robin Ventura. What a glorious day!

My first issue really has absolutely nothing to do with Pizza Ranch, but rather the ability to get to Pizza Ranch. Road construction has been going on forever at the I55 overpass onto Route 52, but has anyone actually seen any construction happening? It’s just a bunch of traffic cones closing off roads with nothing happening. The entire process made me want to turn around and go home but there is literally nowhere to turn.

As it turns out, the traffic was the high point of my dining experience.

I walked in and immediately got a “Mid 90’s Old Country Buffet” vibe. Is there a store that exists that i’m not aware of that just sells the most bland restaurant dining setups in history? There was a small buffet right in front of me, and I figured there was another buffet line with more food. I was very, very, very incorrect.

Have I mentioned yet that they dumped this place into Shorewood, which is just a perfect location for a restaurant like this. It gives you a perfect cross section of people who have given up and people who are willing to eat their body weight to prove they got value from their meal. Me? I fall into the latter, which is why the amount of food I saw was concerning.

Before I even got an opportunity to get to the food, I had an opportunity to watch the avatar for all of Shorewood in action.

Some random kid came running up out of nowhere and stood at the buffet line. The beleaguered teenager working the buffet counter asked the kid if he wanted anything, and the oddly non-mulleted kid ran off to a room in back. Before I could finish paying, the kid, who I will henceforth be referring to as Shemp, ran back up and started saying that he wanted pineapple pizza. Well, Shemp might be 8, but I can already tell he absolutely sucks.

The teenager told Shemp not to touch the pizzas with his hands, as Shemp was getting ready to palm an entire pizza. Does anyone want to take a guess at what happened next? You guessed correctly. Shemp palmed the pizza.

At this point, the exasperated teenager working the counter slapped some pizza on a plate, and Shemp, seemingly satisfied that he doesn’t have to shove all the pizza he just touched into his cheeks for transportation like a squirrel, goes running off. Where to? I’m not totally sure. I now realize that the restaurant is nearly empty, except for a couple older gentlemen sitting by themselves. These do not look like men who would have allowed Shemp to run roughshod over the joint. There aren’t other people here at this point. Is Shemp an employee’s kid? Did his parents just drop him off and let him run around all willy nilly all day? Was Shemp even real? Did I imagine him?

I quickly realized that he had to be real, because the teenager took the previously palmed pizza and threw it in the garbage. Don’t worry, though, people with terrible taste in pizza toppings, there was an entire other pizza with pineapple as a condiment for me to silently seethe over.

Remember how I said that I thought the buffet would be bigger, that there would be another side? There wasn’t. Just one small buffet line with five pizzas. That means, when I walked in, 40% of all pizzas at the buffet had pineapple on them. It is now that i’m going to remind people that pineapple pizza is called Hawaiian pizza because someone was really working overtime in the pizza naming department. This is a dishonor to my beloved Hawaii. Hawaiian pizza was created in Ontario Canada, the opposite of Hawaii. It’s not an homage as much as a lazy cultural appropriation.

They also had a salad on the pizza line, which was weird…oh wait, no, that was simply their taco pizza, made for optimum white people excitement. “Oh, this jalapeno is a bit too hot for my liking. Better slap on an entire head of water cabbage onto it.

Off in the distance, I can see Shemp. I’m just going to assume he is feral at this point, which makes sense, because today is the four year anniversary of 30-50 feral hogs, one of the last great communal moments of twitter joy before Elon Musk bought, sodomized, and set it on fire.

I sit down at a booth that seems custom made for people who are alone. It’s a nice touch, an entire setup that shows people that all of my friends have better taste than me. I sit down and think I had a flareup of Vertigo. Oh, that’s not Vertigo, my table just has a massive wobble. I’ve spilled part of my drink before even eating anything. This place has only been open for one month. How is a table already broken?

Now, here is where you would assume i’d rail on the absolute horrible quality of the food. I’m not. I was a longtime enjoyer of CiCi’s Pizza, a kind of cultural institution for worn out parents and gluttons on a budget. The food was never great, but there was always plenty of it! And CiCi’s knew it’s product. That’s why they charged 6.99 to eat there.

Pizza Ranch has the audacity to charge me 18 dollars for lunch, which consisted of the aforementioned pizza, some insanely out of place Thanksgiving side dishes (seriously, they had stuffing) and some chicken with roughly the same quality level of reheated Jewel chicken. What in the unholy hell am I even paying for? Did Shemp pay 18 dollars for this? I bet he would also be outraged.

I actually gave up. I wasn’t even full. I just wanted to leave. I don’t know what specifically broke me. Was it the table that I had to hold down with my foot the entire time I ate? Was it the music selection playing on the speakers, which is the type of country music I assume they sell at church gift stores? Was it the fact that I knew I was going to have to get back into the stupid traffic? And what of poor Shemp? I hope he found his way home. Or was he home? It’s a story to be told by a stronger man than me. I walked out of Pizza Ranch to the blinding sun, the heat of which had nothing on the shame I felt having just eaten there.

I just checked online, and right now a three piece of fried chicken with tater babies, two Signature Brand pizzas, and a two liter of Coca Cola is 17 dollars at Jewel. Can I suggest doing that, then sitting on your own shitty furniture, and listening to whatever music you want?

Or go there. Who cares? We are all just going to die someday, anyway. Except for Shemp. Shemp is immortal.